Stepchild wants to see finances and money spent on his stepsiblings.

[Greenhairedmonstor]

My late FiL who I never met, left school at 15, fell into the right crowd while he was doing a labouring job and ended up with a little empire.

There is something in place that is not quite a trust. It allows SiL to choose to live frugally without working, and has enabled my husband and his brothers an income which supplements their incomes.

Their children will benefit after their parents’ deaths when whatever is in place will be dissolved.

My husband has his own business as well.

My stepchild is 18 and will go to university next month. I also have another stepchild who is 13.

The eldest has asked that now that they are an adult that they want to look at my husband’s finances. Essentially they want an account of any money that is spent on my children and they wanted my husband’s estate to be reimbursed from my share of the house when he dies.

Now Mumsnet always asks, no I was not the other woman, my ex meets more than his share of his financial responsibilities and I also work and rent out a house that I own in my home country that I will eventually return to. Husband’s ex is comfortable and I don’t believe this has come from her.

Inevitably my husband subsidises our life.

This has been a bitter blow to my husband and he doesn’t see how his relationship with his child(ren) will recover.

The kid asked the OP's daughter who had paid when the OP's aunt took her grand niece out somewhere. There are a few posters on here who are raging about the school ski trip for the OP's 11 yo being paid for by DH. You obviously have experienced something bad either as the ex wife or as the step daughter. But this sort of attitude from the DSS is really detrimental to himself - if you were genuniely concerned about the DSS then you wouldn't be focusing on what the hypothetical wishes of a dead man you haven't the faintest idea about were nor the fantasized equity in the OP's foreign property etc etc. and would focus on the fact that the kid has become so obsessed with his father's money (and what it symbolises) he has made an aggressive and irrational demand that actually suggests therapy might be a wise option (though not one to be raised right now of course). This kid is in the very fortunate position of having a guaranteed inheritance that is not going to get eaten up by care home fees etc. The biggest loss on the table right now is the father-son relationship and throwing money at that is not the solution.

It certainly doesn't come out of nowhere. If there wasn't some sort of discrepancy or unfairness, or a change in how he was being treated since the father got remarried, it is likely this wouldn't have come up. Why would it?

GDPR is for organisations not people. You'd look silly saying any of that.

Its pretty bad but also stepchild is 18 and barely an adult.

They've massively overstepped, largely down to immaturity and instead of your husband dramatically declaring it will ruin his relationship with them, he needs to sit down and use it as a teaching moment.

Husbands reaction and saying relationship might never recover is by far the worse of the two evils

There's also no legal obligation not to walk out on them and apply your energies and finances to someone else's dc.

Why would you show your child your finances? The clue is in the word “your” finances. They aren’t “family” finances or the child’s finances. They are the finances of the adult father and his new wife who have chosen to blend their lives and finances.

The DS is entitled to court adjudicated support as a child and to some extent during education but he has no claim on the father’s assets or income other than that. What’s the legal claim? None.

Lastly the DS seems to think he has some legal or moral right to all his father’s discretionary income and some right to claw back gifts or money shared eith the father’s wife or her children. He really doesn’t. The father is not the son’s pensioner.

I don't think you can just say if he's not prioritising the step family over his own then it's not a problem to simply give up whatever degree of financial privacy would be needed, even if all parties agreed on what not prioritising looked like.

DSS wants to be able to scrutinise the spending. We don't know what he means by that, and there's no guarantee that say a bank statement showing transactions to OP with everything else crossed out would satisfy him and his mother. And the problem is if you've started it, you've established the principle that he can see the spends. So if he does say no, I want to see all the transactions and accounts, he's already doing so from a position of you both accepting that it was ok for him to see some of them.

It would be a good idea for all concerned if DSS fully understood the situation and everyone could be confident in that understanding, but what he's asking is actually pretty intrusive.

instead of your husband dramatically declaring it will ruin his relationship with them, he needs to sit down and use it as a teaching moment.

Yes. I asked earlier today if the son had actually said he would do this - cut his father off if Dad doesn't comply. OP implies this by saying her husband fears it but would never do it himself, but unless I've missed it, I don't see any actual explicit threat from the son... I'm not even clear what the son has said he will do if his father won't agree, if anything. Has the son actually overtly made this threat?

(If he has, he really is a shit gold digger. People don't usually inherit when they're estranged.)

How have you come to the conclusion that he hasn’t put his kids first?

just because he chooses to spend some of his own income on his wife and/or her children, doesn’t mean he is neglecting his biological children.

Hahahahahahaha!

No.

When I was a teenager, a friend's mothers was fond of saying "wants don't get". Seems the perfect time to use this phrase.

They can want. They don't get.

I'm guessing your partner will now change his will to cut that CF out of it. Inheritance isn't guaranteed (where there's a will). You can amend wills. And explain to the cheeky shit that no reimbursement is required or due because as others said: it's his money, he can spend it how he likes.

Because there is another thread where he is rude to OPs children too because his dad paid for them to go on a trip.

He is awful and entitled and it doesn’t matter how old he is, he should know better.

Coming from a family of significant wealth in a family investment company, I highly doubt he has no prior knowledge of it.

DH’s family have a similar financial set up and all the children are aware from a certain age (usually mid teens) with the option of attending AGMs, etc once they turn 18.
I’m pretty confident none of them are asking to see a breakdown of their parent’s finances to see where “their” money is going!

I don’t have to show my financial breakdown to my husband, I’ll be damned if I need to explain myself to my child because they feel “hard done by”

I have an inkling that the step child has gone down a rabbit hole with chat gpt and it told him to ask these questions. It sounds like the sort of thing that comes out of late night research and then he has acted on it.
I think it might be a good idea for the father to go and see a solicitor with his eldest and get them to lay out his inheritance, how it will be protected and what he is and isn’t entitled to at this point, including his rights to dig into his fathers finances. Hopefully that will give them both piece of mind and they can move on from there. Eldest might be feeling like he is now grown and will eventually lose contact and any rights to his inheritance and doesn’t understand fully what is happening now his dad has a new family. A solicitor could really help here and give him the actual facts and if he doesn’t see the facts after that then that’s entirely on his head.

My bet is ExW doesn’t like that he has OP and her family now, and the DS has been caught in the middle. It is probably more pertinent now too that DS is 18 so Ex won’t get maintenance and DS will have less spends.

But ultimately the OPs DP can spend his money how he wishes, and that includes on both DS and DSCs.

I’m going with the Ex being the one who has his head this way

That still doesn't justify the frankly deranged level of spite and vitriol being thrown at him. He's a teenager and navigating life with his father having a second step family. There aren't many youngsters who manage that while maintaining perfect saintliness - and nobody baying for his blood and calling him every sick name under the sun, fantasising about him being kicked in the testicles and all the rest of it has any right to condemn him. They don't exactly have glowing halos themselves. If he's old enough to know better, they certainly are.

It's utterly disgraceful.

Why a disparity between what your FIL left his daughters and what he left his sons ?

Don't invent things. It's the same amount. The daughter doesn't work.

Is this for real? This grossly entitled teenager has totally unreasonable expectations, how could he think for a moment that it's right to spout this nonsense? A clue is that dad thinks asserting proper boundaries will cause their relationship to fail. Has this entitled brat been subject to boundaries before? Does he know what one looks like?

The correct response to these demands is 'you are having a laugh, mind your own business'. Certainly don't dignify this entitled, divisive money-grabbing by pandering to his grubby fantasies.

How do you know that the man walked out on his children? It’s also rather wild that step-mothers on MN are often told that stepchildren must be included in every aspect of the “blended family” be it childcare, holidays, spending money, whatever but the same is not expected from stepfathers?

Did the stepson think he was entitled to funds when he turned 18? Does he think these are being denied to him? He’s shaping up to be a right one isn’t he though?

I wasn't actually claiming he did, rather that the fact that what is or isn't mandated by law isn't necessarily coterminous with what is or isn't pretty crappy behaviour.

And in answer to your question about the imbalance between what is and isn't said to SFs and SMs, the difference I think is that men tend - not all, but very generally - to move on and forget to defend the interests of their own dc whereas SMs are more about defending their own at the expense of sdc.

It sounds like this is an ongoing issue. OP’s previous post about a wedding from earlier this year gives more context: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5509580-wedding-aftermath?page=1

At the wedding (which OP’s children weren’t originally invited to, until her husband requested they be added) stepson was asked to move away from his family to another table to accommodate one of OP’s children and it sounds like OP’s child was showing off about the skiing holiday to stepson’s wider family. Stepson made the “spending our inheritance” comment then and his Mum got in touch with OP’s DH later to back him up. OP’s sister in law (who I assume is stepson’s aunt) was apparently sarcastic and didn’t want to sit at the table with OP’s son.

Personally I don’t think this is actually just about money, I think stepson, his Mum and his aunt feel OP’s children are being favoured by her DH over stepson and his sibling. Whether or not they actually are, OP’s DH needs to speak to his children and try to get to the bottom of why the stepson feels like that and how they can improve their relationship. Once he’s dealt with the emotional side he can then addresses the inappropriateness of the request to go through his finances.